Architecture Here and There

Illustrations: Above, the newly opened Maxxi museum of contemporary art, in Rome; below top, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City; second, Zaha Hadid; third, Ara Pacis museum, Rome; fourth, Richard Meier inside Ara Pacis museum; fifth, Maxxi from above (model)

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The global art world converges on Rome this weekend, but truth and beauty also hope to sneak in to witness, softly, amid the glare.

Pope Benedict XVI will host 262 artists, leaders in their artistic fields, invited without regard to religious belief. Bono cannot make it, but Zaha Hadid will be there. Yes, the barbarians will meet the pontiff not just inside the gates of the Eternal City but inside the Sistine Chapel itself.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said in a Nov. 5 media event that the aim of the gathering is to "renew friendship and dialogue between the church and artists, and to spark new opportunities for collaboration. . . . We are a bit like estranged relatives; there has been a divorce." For a century the church "has very often content[ed] itself with imitating models from the past," and hesitated to ask itself whether there might be religious "styles that could be an expression of modern times."

I urge Pope Benedict and Archbishop Ravasi to visit the latest work by one of their guests. Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born, London-based deconstructivist architect known for her jagged and slithery modernism. She has designed the new Maxxi art museum, in the Flaminio district, thankfully well beyond Rome's historic center.

"At the entrance," says one review, "a concrete box that houses an upper-level gallery projects out above your head, its front tilted menacingly."

This passage, from Nicolai Ouroussoff's review "Modern Lines for the Eternal City," in Sunday's New York Times, concludes a description of the approach along Via Luigi Poletti to the museum. If the pope and the cardinal follow Ouroussoff's instructions, they should come upon the museum around a bend and feel the sudden sensation that, yes, indeed, the vandals are circling the city.

[The only major work of modernism to have breached the walls and invaded the historic center of Rome is the Ara Pacis museum, left, by Richard Meier, which houses the Ara Pacis tomb from ancient times. Rome's new mayor has promised to bow to popular sentiment for its removal, but has not yet acted.]

Some members of the TradArch list (a forum of architectural discussion) warn that Ouroussoff's essay represents a "pre-emptive strike against the Appeal to His Holiness Benedict XVI for the Return to an Authentically Catholic Sacred Art."

I alluded to the appeal at the beginning of this column. The appeal is "truth and beauty" trying to crash the party at the Sistine Chapel. The appeal states its case in the sort of phraseology appropriate when dealing with a personage known as "his holiness." Indeed, its sentiments will be easily recognized by the pope, who, as Cardinal Ratzinger under Pope John Paul II, warned in 1998 against the rock and pop stars, such as Bob Dylan, that the pontiff was consorting with at the Vatican.

"They had a message that was completely different from the one the pope was committed to," wrote Cardinal Ratzinger at the time. He asked whether "it was really right to let these types of 'prophets' intervene." No doubt he feared that John Paul, who was so tough in his opposition to the Soviet Union, was backsliding on art. Even a pope must sometimes play the good cop!

I have a feeling that when Benedict gets a load of Maxxi, his words as cardinal will come rushing back to him. He will recognize in the architecture of Zaha "Ha-Ha" Hadid and her fellow modernists the shade of the devil incarnate. He may have a word or two with his cultural counselor.

Notwithstanding the Maxxi museum's "front tilting menacingly," the devil's rhetoric does not clobber her victims on the head with a hammer but tickles them under the chin, trying to lure the weak into beginning their descent with an apple, or an art museum subtly designed to evoke, without being too obvious, a snake, or the turret of a tank that crushes the human spirit, or a vacuum that hoovers it up and hocks it into a spittoon.

[Many images online depict versions of the model of Maxxi as seen from above - snaky! - but I could find no photographs of how the finished product actually appears from above.]

The appeal begs the pope to rethink, to not fall victim to the smooth rhetoric of modernist propaganda that admonishes the church for "contenting itself with imitating the models of the past," and that it should seek "an expression of modern times." Those are Cardinal Ravasi's words, from above. But they could have been lifted from any textbook at almost any school of architecture.

The appeal reads in part: "Architecture and sacred art have spread through the followers of the famous masters, but have in the modern age been virtually prohibited among modern architects and in architectural education. . . . The recourse to historical styles, classical and 'sacramental' architecture does not pose any obstacle to the creative architectural process, but rather it directs the process to communicate the . . . truth that the church must spread. The message of Jesus Christ and the Gospels cannot be interpreted by subjectivity: They are established as truths of faith."

In short, there's a good reason for the divorce between art and religion. If a church is the spirit visible, then a papal embrace of the likes of Zaha Hadid should cause a global trembling among the faithful. Faith is not required to fear the ill effect of modern architecture on the spirit of mankind.

To sign the appeal to the pope, please visit my blog or www.appelloalpapa.blogspot.com/.

[The appeal is here. Please sign the appeal. There are over 1,200 signatures at this writing - only three, however, from New England last I looked. The more signatories there are by the time Pope Benedict meets with the artists this Saturday, the more likely his words for them may reflect the sentiments of the appeal.]

David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board (dbrussat@projo.com). His projo.com blog is called Architecture Here and There.

 Tags  architecture art Maxxi modernism Nicolai Ouroussoff Pope Benedict XVI Rome Sistine Chapel Zaha Hadid

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